Foreign Relations
by Kirmon64
Summary: After the fall of Mizar's Empire, Goldwood closes their borders. Fifteen years later, a Federation journalist gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance to interview a member of its government.


I've actually been wanting/trying to submit something to ffnet's JFG section for many years now... and then when I wrote this I totally neglected to XD Lot of headcanons in here! Might be a little hard to follow at points due to this, but I tried to make it as understandable as possible.

Written for a prompt-a-thon on another site; the prompt was "Foreign".

* * *

Goldwood is not known for opening its arms to visitors, even before Mizar. There are not many who would call them isolationist - after all, the trade routes in their space are more active than ever. For the first time there are even Federation traders in Tribal space, no matter how few, and the number of pirates and slavers has by all accounts been drastically reduced.

Still, there has not been a Federation citizen in the vicinity of Goldwood since Team Gemini brought an end to Mizar's reign. Maybe it's for the best - Goldwood's monarchy is notoriously distrustful of the Federation, and I imagine even the smallest diplomatic incident might lead them to close their borders entirely.

Thus, the request to conduct an in-person interview with a member of Goldwood's government came as a surprise. Doubly so when I asked around and learned it was directed to myself and myself alone. I'm no stranger to the checks the military conducts when it comes to events such as these, and it was a week later when I finally learned that the request was entirely legitimate.

At first I wondered _"why me?"_ , and then I assumed it was due to my previous work in similar situations. There was never a choice in my mind as to whether or not I should accept; in fact I had packed a bag before the military had even given me the go-ahead.

I was given the contact information of an official on Goldwood and told he was to be my liaison. We communicated a great deal over the weeks leading up to my trip; I learned that his name was Avior and that he lived on Goldwood itself, but he told me little else about himself. I assumed he was a kind of servant of one of the nobility, perhaps a communications official - as I learned later, the assumption was not far from the truth.

When I left for Tribal space, I was not directed to Goldwood itself, which I admit was something of a relief. I certainly didn't want to be the Federation citizen to accidentally cause the aforementioned diplomatic incident, and arriving somewhere other than the heart of their territory was a good start.

Instead, my ship was directed to Tawfret. For those unaware, this is a smaller planet several subspace buoys' distance from Goldwood. It was the first extrasolar planet that the Tribals had colonized, many centuries ago, via generational ship. Something had happened to it during the war with Mizar's Empire, however, resulting in an ecological disaster that left the planet's biosphere ruined. Goldwood has remained tight-lipped about _what_ happened, but curiously they have never blamed the Empire. I had asked Avior, but he had simply told me it was not his place to answer. I hoped my as-yet unnamed interviewee might be able to finally give both myself and the Federation more insight as to what happened.

Passing through the Federation-Goldwood border went smoothly. I was directed to a red dwarf star that served as the boundary marker, with a Federation cruiser as an escort. Our arrival was met by a trio of ships whose size and design indicated they had probably once been Mizarian corvettes. The 'exchange' of guardianship was smooth, though perhaps somewhat tense, and I left with the corvettes without a single offensive maneuver being made, never mind a shot fired. To me, this was victory enough.

The three-day trip to Tawfret itself was quiet, and I spent much of this time brushing up on my history of the Tribal species and their common customs. I spoke to my liasion only rarely, though he always answered if I called him, no matter what time it was. I did not speak to anyone on the corvettes at all, aside from two small text-only sets of instructions of when to wait and then proceed. I don't know if I was communicating with Tribals or drones, though I strongly suspect the latter.

When I arrived at Tawfret, it was to a gloomy, cloud-covered pitiful little marble. Once it had been as sunny and verdant as Goldwood itself, and I wondered what kind of disaster could have even caused a reaction such as this. The scant few reports indicate that the planet is _technically_ inhabitable, with an average global temperature of above freezing and an atmosphere still containing both oxygen and large amounts of water. The only problem is the permanent cloud cover and the severe rains that accompany it.

I was not guided to the planet itself, or the dozens of ships, stations, and elevators surrounding it. Instead I was directed to one of its moons. It was too small for terraforming, being small enough to not even be spherical, but a base was easily visible on its surface. The artistry pointed to the base being of Tribal design - but in orbit of the moon there was one of the Mizarian warships.

I had sincerely hoped to not encounter any of them, and had been relieved when I was told I would be visiting Tawfret rather than Goldwood as I'd assumed they would all be keeping close to home. In plotting my course to the moonbase's landing bay I passed into the shadow of the warship. At that moment I experienced my first sense of fear. Most of you have not seen those warships in person, I hope, and until that point I was the same. The recordings of them can't do their incredible size justice; my ship, a Vega Hyundai, could have easily fit into one of the warship's main guns. To say nothing of its mass driver, or any of what I presume were cargo bays.

My ship was guided into the moonbase's landing bay via a tractor beam once I came within range. I took a moment to steel myself before exiting; what I encountered was likely to be as unnerving as the warship whose shadow still lingered overhead. I carried no weapons and wore no armor. I had been offered a concealed shield generator, but I had turned it down; I felt that I should be as honest as possible in my dealings with Goldwood's government.

Of course, a porta-shield would do me no good anyway. My Vega could never outrun any of the Mizarian ships.

When I exited the hatch, there was a single drone waiting for me. Like me, she carried no weapons and was similarly unarmored - though she had the distinct advantage of her natural exoskeleton. I wasn't certain what to make of this situation. I had expected a Tribal, or at least a group.

Nevertheless, I made my way toward the drone. She was taller than me, which was to be expected due to the general height of the species and my lack thereof. She was not one of the towering, 1.9m+ tall behemoths we have all seen in the war footage. Her body was structured in a distinctly more graceful fashion, more wasp-like than ant-like, with antennae curving in a gentle sideways arc and a body built for agility rather than brute strength. Her coloration was different, too, deep glossy black rather than the blue or red of the drones commonly seen on the battlefield.

"I'm glad you could make it," the drone said to me, and held her hand out to me. "I trust your journey went well?" She spoke with very little of the growl or distortion one hears in the recordings of drones speaking Standard. Her voice was masculine and lightly accented with something distinctly British.

 _(*Despite the drone's appearance and voice, she much later told me she used female pronouns and was female in every way that mattered to her species. When one is dealing with alien races, one learns to simply go along with everything one is told.)_

I shook the drone's hand, more out of habit than anything else. The edges of her exoskeletal plates scratched against the palm of my hand, but did not cut.

After our handshake, the drone and I exchanged what I might call pleasantries as we traversed the halls of the base. We discussed the tensions at the border, the tastes of various foods both Earthen and alien, and even the posturing of one's superiors, all in no great detail. It was simply the sort of thing one might talk to a fellow interstellar passenger about in order to pass the time. Despite my nervousness, I found myself relaxing slightly. This drone, at least, was knowledgeable about Earth culture and common customs, and had gone through some effort to make me feel more at ease.

During our walk we passed both drones and Tribals in the hallway; the drones would look away from the two of us, often at the floor. The Tribals often smiled up at me, though they also seemed reluctant to look at my guide. None of them looked afraid or injured - but all of them carried weapons, whereas the majority of the drones did not. I imagined that no matter what their rulers said, the average citizen did not yet consider their former oppressors trustworthy.

The drone led me to a room that was small and out of the way. I had expected a meeting room, or perhaps personal quarters; this was neither. It seemed to be an office, dominated by a single desk with several datapads of varying sizes and designs scattered over its surface. The only other furniture in the room was three chairs, each of a completely different design and intended for different body shapes. One was behind the desk and structured as a kind of cupped stool designed for a drone body; the other two were shaped more for Tribal and therefore human forms.

The whole thing was depressingly utilitarian, the sort of design one might see in the apartment blocks of the 2190s. The only 'luxuries', if they could be called that, were thus: an alien plant tucked into the corner of the room, an ornate knife mounted in a display case on the wall, and an alcove containing a showerhead and drain.

The drone gestured to the largest of the three chairs, and I took a seat. It was far more comfortable than it appeared - so plush that I felt the cushions might swallow me up. Directly after this it was confirmed that the drone was in fact who I was supposed to be meeting with, because she went behind the desk and withdrew a bottle of sparkling liquid and a pair of glasses.

"2216 Domenico," the drone said by way of explanation. She sat on the edge of the desk and poured us each a glass. It was as though I was talking to an old colleague, down to the positioning of my chair. A most curious feeling indeed when talking to what amounts to a giant insect, let me assure you.

"I'm told this is considered a good year for the vineyard," the drone said, swirling the drink around in her glass but not sipping. I wondered if drones could even drink from the same containers that humans or Tribals could, due to the design of their mouths. "I can't say I noticed the difference, but drones don't experience tastes the same way humans do. I hope it's to your liking."

I don't drink alcohol much, as a rule, but I tried the Domenico regardless to be polite. The absurdity of politeness to a species such as the drones was not lost on me, but I resolved to simply treat the drone as I might treat any other foreign diplomat: with respect and dignity.

"I'm sure you have questions you'd like to ask me," the drone said. "Fire away."

The first thing I asked was her name. She introduced herself thusly:

"Merak, Minister of External Affairs. Or," she added, quite casually, "You might know me as General Merak, the spymaster. Of course, I'm basically just a desk jockey nowadays." This was punctuated with a wave toward the datapads scattered over the desk.

I was stunned into silence. I had expected someone of high rank for a meeting such as this, but not _this_ high. And certainly not the mysterious General Merak - mentioned by many, seen by absolutely no one. I had read theories that Merak was not a drone at all, but a machine or a collection of drones, or even a turncoat Federation citizen. If I were to believe this drone - and I saw no reason to not - then all of those theories had been thoroughly debunked.

"Trust me," Merak added, and there was a definite curl of humor in her voice. "Researching your past has been the most spying I've done in years. Thank you for that, by the way; I thoroughly enjoyed myself."

Out of curiosity, I asked what she had learned about me. I don't think I'm famous in any sense of the word, even within the more specialist circles of journalism, and I was curious as to how much information an alien with plenty of experience might actually be able to uncover about me.

"You have two dogs and you live in San Francisco," Merak replied, "You specialize in journalism dealing with the Federation's interactions with alien governments. And you prefer informal interactions with those you interview." She gestured around the room with her as-yet untouched wine. "What a coincidence, I prefer informal interviews too. I bet we'll get along nicely. So, tell me: you've seen the vids making the rounds on YouTube?"

I said that I had.

 _(*If you haven't seen them, examples include the_ _peanut butter video_ _, the_ _yarn-bomber_ _, and the_ _soccer/football video_ _.)_

Merak nodded at me. "Doing your research, good. I had my part in those. Y'know, the habit of running a shadow government never really goes away. I try not to do _everything_ for the King, though. He's much more competent than ol' Mizar ever was."

I had no idea how to react to any of this. I had not prepared for talking to a drone, and certainly not one of the rank that Merak possessed - and _certainly_ not for one so dismissive of her deceased Emperor. All available information pointed to a slavish devotion to Mizar by all of his drones, even after his defeat and death. Those that felt differently were literally one in a million.

"You see," Merak continued, "We're still a military force. Different leaders, different objectives, still military. It's what we do. Doesn't mean we're anything like we were under Mizar. The Tribals are learning it, and now it's the Federation's turn. Ask me anything you like: I'll answer honestly. Except when the answer's classified, of course. I'm sure you understand."

I wasn't sure if the overt familiarity was meant to be kind or threatening; to be honest, I'm still not sure. I suspect it might have been both. I ended up asking - blurting, I'm ashamed to admit - whether or not the King was even aware I was here. A dangerous thing to ask, if I really was being threatened, but Merak's comment about her 'shadow government' had set me on edge, even if it was meant in jest.

"Of course," Merak replied. "I actually respect him; I don't hide my activities from him."

I then asked what the warship in orbit of Tawfret's moon was for. I realized directly after I asked that this sounded accusatory and couldn't be helping my position any, but Merak seemed unconcerned.

"Oh," she replied, "The Serket? It's here for you, actually. Your safety. We still get the occasional pirate sneaking into the system to raid Tawfret for Mizar knows what reasons. Even the stupid ones turn tail when they see a warship. Dan'll be watching you on the way back to Federation space."

I assumed that Merak meant the same Dan that shows up or is mentioned in most of the post-war drone videos, but he'd never made any mention of an arrangement like this. Perhaps this was to be expected, if he was wrapped up in Goldwood's self-reliant policies.

 _(*The awe and slight fear due to the knowledge that not one but two Mizarian warships had apparently been directed to specific locations for my sake did not occur to me until much later. The exact capabilities of Dan's ship are not known to Federation civilians, but reports have strongly implied its size and armaments are similar to the smaller Mizarian warships.)_

"The one and only Commander Dan," Merak confirmed. "He's officially a General. Skipped a lot of ranks in between, lucky bastard. Didn't even have to kill anyone for it."

I wanted to know more about Dan, I won't lie - I imagine most of you feel the same. But Merak had given me an obvious opening into both her own past and the general culture of the drones, which is something we've learned very little about. I decided to follow the cue Merak had given me. The curiosity of a human amongst drones could wait, and besides I imagined I might have time to interview him if he was to be my escort home.

"Hmm," Merak said. She leaned back, bracing herself with one arm. I noticed her elbow shaking very slightly, but thought nothing of it at the time. "Doesn't mean much to you, but I'm from batch 137, before the war. Not too much before - a Federation's month, something like that. It was the first batch of my breed, so a lot of the others died. Didn't come out of the tanks right."

"We were trained specifically to infiltrate the Federation. I remember early on... oh, that's not a good story. Let's just say Mizar's Empire was not kind to its slaves or POWs. I'd like to say I let mine go, but I didn't know any better, and besides I'd have gotten a bullet between my eyes if I did."

I pressed the issue further, and Merak described the multi-day long hunts of slaves and POWs, mostly human, and what they did to those people after they were caught. She didn't go into very much detail, and I will omit the details that she did give from this article to spare you the horror of it.

 _(*If you wish to listen to the full transcript, it can be located_ _here_ _. It is not for the squeamish or faint of heart.)_

"That was Mizarian culture," Merak said. I was busy staring into my drink, contemplating what I had just been told. "I doubt my squad was even the worst of any of that batch. We were taught to hate and kill from the instant we emerged from our tanks. There was no softness, no help. If you were smaller, if you had a defect, if you were male - if you could keep up, you would live through hell. If you couldn't keep up, you'd be fed to the fitter members of your batch. Is it any wonder Mizar's Empire was like it was? If you trained human or Tribal children in the way drones were trained, I'd bet you fifty creds that they'd come out the exact same."

Merak sounded like someone who had wanted to say all of this for a long time, but had never been able to. Small wonder, if what she said was true - and everything every publicly-available source said about the drones certainly matched. I said as much to her, that it sounded like she had repressed this for a long time. She laughed, which sounded as humanlike as the rest of her speech; it was stranger to hear the laugh than it was the voice.

"Let me show you something," she said, and slid off of the edge of the desk. She beckoned me over, and when I complied she directed me to place my hand on her back, where a human's shoulder blades would be located. I had expected a drone body to be cool, or at least similar to a human body temperature. Merak was instead fever-hot. The exoskeleton felt waxy, which I had also not expected - her hand had been dry.

Beneath my palm was an odd raised ridge in the middle of one of the plates, which didn't seem to fit the general design of the exoskeleton. Moving my palm to the opposite 'shoulder blade' revealed an identical ridge, which ruled out scarring.

"Judging by the way you're running your hand all over me I assume you can feel that," Merak said, in the tone one might take when trying to flirt. I wasn't given any opportunity to reply or even react before she continued onward. "Those are the ridges where my wings grew."

I recalled that one of Dan's drones had wings, and there was a single drone in the military footage who also had them. I had never given it much thought, assuming it was a small aberration from the factory default in the same manner as the faint stripes or spots that some of them possessed. I said as much, and Merak laughed again.

"No. Only males grow wings. Drones are 95% female. 3% are male - the remaining 2% are somewhere in between. That's what I am. I was one of the lucky ones, because to other drones I'm female-scented. I tore out my wings before I learned to speak, because I saw how the male in my batch was treated. He was tortured and killed by my sisters during training." She proceeded to give a short description of how she watched her brother die, which I will again omit from this article. "You can probably understand why I wanted to avoid that."

My knee-jerk reaction was to offer my condolences, as I'm sure most of you can empathize with. I said nothing, because I was beginning to realize how vastly different my experiences were from Merak's. An apology was likely to simply be interpreted as empty sentiments.

"And you think I had it bad, I'm sure," Merak continued, turning to pick up one of the datapads on her desk. She still sounded nothing but amused; I wondered if she felt anything at all about the horrors of his past. Perhaps, like human survivors of abuse, she didn't think there was anything particularly unusual about it. "Avior, my second-in-command. Your liaison, if he didn't tell you - probably didn't, he likes to be sneaky."

He had not. In fact, until that moment I had thought he was a Tribal. His voice had lacked even the slightest hint of growl, and his accent had been distinctly Tribal. It was enough to make me wonder just how many "Tribal" voices I'd heard over the past few years had actually been drones.

"He's not only a male, but a meditech. The little yellow ones you see running away from all the fights in the Federation vids. The females themselves were treated like dogs, and a male? I've no idea how he survived long enough for me to find him and take him under my wing. Metaphorically speaking, of course."

The image Merak brought up on the datapad was both familiar and not - if you look up an image of Goldwood's nobility you'll see something strikingly similar: an array of Tribals, each wearing elaborate headdresses, surrounding an adult male, an adult female, and a preteen female.

In Merak's image, behind the young Princess there stands a drone. There are others, arrayed around the fringes of the image, but he is the only one afforded a position of importance beside the royal family. He has wings, but they're tattered shreds hanging limply from his back. Most of his head is a mass of scar tissue, and he wears an eyepatch over what I can only imagine is a horrifically mangled eye.

 _(*Merak has given me a copy of this image, as well as an album of updated images of Goldwood's nobility and military officers; see_ _here_ _to view the album.)_

"Might made right, under Mizar. If the other Generals had seen Avior's genius instead of making him clean the septic tanks, we'd probably have won the war." Merak scoffed, tossing the datapad back onto her desk. "Idiots. If the war'd lasted too much longer I'd have started feeding intel to the Federation. We'd have eventually lost anyway - better to get it over with."

I wasn't sure how to respond to this sudden burst of information. To hear that one of Mizar's Generals had been nearly on the verge of defecting or at least counter-subterfuge against her own ruler and creator - it was certainly unexpected. I have read of other drones offering the Federation information, or simply opportunistically deserting, in exchange for not being killed. Having the spymaster herself do much the same would have certainly resulted in a death-blow for the Empire if Jet Force Gemini had not done so themselves.

I decided to ask why Merak had chosen now to tell me this, and by extension the rest of the Federation. She'd had opportunities in the past, certainly, and surely this facet of her personality being known to her superiors and underlings would be damaging to her reputation at the very least.

Merak sat up on the desk again. Her leg idly swung back and forth, the ankle joint tapping against the desk. "Because I'm dying." She held up one hand, and I could see it trembling despite her efforts to keep it steady. Her voice, on the other hand, remained lighthearted. She seemed genuinely unconcerned about her impending death.

"We only live 15 Federation years, and I'm older than that. I've already outlived all of the other Generals, even the ones who were younger - except the damn robot, anyway. The point is, I fully expect to suffer catastrophic organ failure and kick the bucket any day now. I don't particularly care about what happens to my reputation after I'm dead."

She leaned back again, bracing both hands on the desk. I now wondered if the casual gesture was a means to disguise the trembling in her limbs; it seemed likely, given how she had described the society she had grown up in. I wondered if it was even a conscious movement.

"I'm one of the last of the Mizarian drones, y'know. All the drones you've seen at this base have only ever been allies of the Tribals, not their oppressors. The crew of the Serket is completely composed of Goldwood-grown drones. They're nothing like the drones the Federation remembers, and every new batch Alkaid cooks up gets farther and farther from Mizar's ideal. If my kind is going to survive in the long run, the Federation needs to learn that."

I surmised that that was why Merak had offered me this opportunity to learn all I could about the drones. The goal seemed reasonable, and even if I were inclined to be suspicious I can't see any problems with the logic of it. For years there has been a slow trickle of information coming from Goldwood about the drones they had somehow allied themselves with, all of it positive or at the very least informative. No government can keep a lie forever; if this were a lie, it was certainly a needlessly elaborate one for no gain at all.

I told Merak I would do my best to give the Federation an unbiased view of the drones as they were now, so long as she told me the truth.

Merak plucked a straw out of the pile of datapads, sticking it in her untouched glass of Domenico. This answered my curiosity as to how drones drank from containers not meant for mandibles; apparently they simply bypass the container entirely. "Sure thing," she replied, and then added with a distinctly amused tone: "I suppose this makes you part of my information network now, you know. Congratulations on being the first Federation citizen I've ever hired."

I said I wasn't quite sure how to take the idea of that, and it prompted another laugh from the drone sitting across from me. "Be glad that no one from the Federation decided to turn against their fellow citizens, I suppose. Not any that hadn't already lost their citizenship for unrelated reasons, anyway."

Our conversation continued naturally from there - I began by asking Merak about her role in Mizar's Empire, and whatever details of the dealings with other groups that she was willing to give me. This turned out to be quite a lot - she saw no reason to keep the secrets of a government body dead for over a decade.

Needless to say, our interview/conversations continued for several days. It would have been impossible to learn all she had to tell me in the two days I had originally planned on staying, and I wound up sending a transmission back to the Federation informing them that I would be remaining for an extra five days.

The extra time was well worth it. Closer to the end, Merak's health began to deteriorate rapidly, and I was told this was a natural part of the drone lifespan. When I finally left, Merak was confined to bed and could no longer walk. I suspect that by the time this is published she will have been dead for days.

Merak told me almost every detail of her life that she could recall. Certain topics she avoided due to their remaining classified, or what she claimed were "probably too ugly for you to hear". Considering the horrific stories she freely told, sometimes without prompting, I was inclined to simply trust her.

Due to the length of our conversations, the article intended to cover them will instead be split into seven parts. The recordings of each of them are available now, but I warn you they are long and morbidly fascinating, and certainly not for the faint of heart.

After everything, I found myself musing on everything Merak had told me about the drones and how they were integrating into Tribal society. The answer is, surprisingly, "well", by both her estimation as well as Avior's. The Tribals are an easygoing species, and this entire situation showcases their extraordinary capacity to forgive even a brutal occupation.

This ability to trust in even the most extenuating circumstances has brought them unexpected peace and prosperity after one of the darkest periods in their planet's history. Perhaps, in the end, we should take our cue from the Tribals and offer the metaphorical olive branch to trust our former enemies.

.

 _Tajai Lin is a freelance journalist, most known for his coverage on post-conflict events and the cultural impact they have. His work has appeared in Al Jazeera, the Huffington Post, Eira Today, and WordPressPro, among others._


End file.
